‘Test Drive The Arts’ for Families

Background

In 1998 Anne Roberts wrote Test Drive the Arts: a practical guide to setting up schemes that bring people into the arts, or a particular art-form, or venue for the first time. The term Test Drive was used by Arts About Manchester (now The Audience Agency), to describe initiatives in the arts that encouraged new audiences to try out the art on offer in a way that was low risk. This approach is much like how car retailers operate, by encouraging people to ‘Test Drive’ their products free of charge. Test Drive as a concept is not new; many organisations have been using this approach to target new audiences for years and there are many examples that you can learn from. Test Drive is more than just free tickets however, it refers to an overall approach describing:

“An arts organisation’s planned and incentivised encouragement of people to experience something in the arts for the first time, leading to lasting relationships” p3, Test Drive the Arts, Anne Roberts, 1998

Test Drive is not necessarily about working with audiences that you find very hard to appeal to; although they may be included in your targeting. It is about broadening your audience base to anyone that you currently don’t attract. It is about finding out and knowing what families want, and responding to this. It is about increasingly teaming up with other organisations to make best use of resources and to ensure families in 2013 and beyond are offered the best possible arts experiences we are in a position to offer.

This resource

This resource is designed to be a quick prompt to help you:

Identify where you are now and where you would like to be in terms of reaching new family audiences.

Have a really effective conversation either internally or with partners about what taking a Test Drive approach could achieve.